Eunice & Roger.
In the nineties I made several trips to hospital with my gall bladder, not that I could have gone without it but I was rather hoping that I might have left without it. One particular visit was due to the migration of several gallstones, which had blocked my pancreatic duct causing inflammation of the pancreas.
I suffered the embarrassing condition of jaundice which turns you bright yellow, makes you smell of iodine and gives your eyes the distinct look of pickled onions (In malt vinegar of course). I was too ill to have the operation to remove the thing on that occasion so the doctors concentrated on making me fit enough for the operation at a later date. *(See Legless and Bloodied.:December)
Actually I was quite ill, all that day I had been in a fever and hallucinating, at one point I was convinced that the house was shaking free of its foundations in an effort to fling itself into outer space, crazy really but infinitely more entertaining than the telly. My ex wife pleaded with me to let her call the doctor, but I would have none of it. I owned a TV and Video shop at the time and was convinced that the fever would pass allowing me to open for business as usual the next morning. How wrong I was, when it was obvious that I was near collapse she phoned the doctor anyway, whom when she arrived took one look at me and phoned for an ambulance.
I don’t remember much about her visit, but apparently I demanded she hand over her bag of tricks so that I would administer succour to myself. When she quite rightly refused I told her to “bang a needle in me woman or get out”. I remember nothing about the trip to hospital or being admitted my next lucid memory was of waking up the next morning in bed on a mixed ward at Manchester general. Which is how I came to meet Eunice and Roger.
Eunice was in the next bed to me and was the first person I spoke to that first morning, my fever had passed, as had my gallstones, but I was still very weak. As I opened my eyes the high ceiling with its suspended lights came slowly into focus and the familiar hospital odour of stale disinfectant, vomit, rotting fruit and lanced boils filled my nostrils.
“You do look a funny colour, do you know you glow in the dark? Even after they turned the lights out I could still read my book by you” Then she laughed, her laugh was infectious, and despite my pain I laughed too. You just had to with Eunice; it was half giggle half guffaw, but very gentile. She was in her late sixties but still a handsome woman and when she laughed or smiled, which was often, the evidence that she had once been a stunningly beautiful woman could be seen even by a blind man.
I discovered that Eunice had been in and out of hospital many times over the preceding three years undergoing several operations that had taken a heavy toll on her body. Despite this she maintained her sense of humour and could manage a joke even when in great pain. I only saw her cry once, not for herself but because a young chap on the other side of the ward had been told he had inoperable cancer.
He was devastated and inconsolable at the news of course, but he put a brave show on for his wife and kids when they visited. After visiting time was over and the quiet night came he could be heard sobbing softly behind his curtains. Eunice spent many long hours in the darkness sat on his bed comforting him, and even on one occasion made him laugh, she was that kind of person, selfless.
She lived in a cottage in Cheshire with her husband Roger, who had been in the airforce, whilst she had been a teacher and attributed her youthful outlook on life to the diverse nature of the thugs she had endeavoured to enlighten down the years. (She did say this with her tongue in her cheek). Once when we were talking about her years teaching she told me that every now and again she came across a child who actually enjoyed learning for learning sake and not as a means to an end, which made it all worth while. She often spoke about those years and when she did her eyes sparkled, she looked wistful and I could tell she was in another time. It was obvious that she missed teaching.
Roger was a tall still handsome man with a handlebar moustache and a military bearing; he made the trip to the hospital twice a day to visit Eunice and was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. They greeted each other as though it had been years since they met, and when it was time to leave the goodbyes were always long and I could see that parting if only for a few hours was a painful experience for them both. They were after many years together still very much in love. It was obvious even to a cynic like myself. He touched her often, would hold her hand and stroke it, gently tracing its contours with his fingers. He would brush her hair for her whilst they chatted and if she fell asleep during a visit as she often did he would sit in the large chair at the side of the bed and look at her. He would hold her hand and sometimes quietly hum a tune as though he were singing a lullaby to an infant.
Because of the nature of my ailment my diet was less than luxurious. Hospital food isn’t up to much at the best of times but the grey stuff that stuck to the plate and refused to succumb to knife, fork or spoon was vile tasting and shot through my system at the speed of light. So I had the only boiled sweet I ever liked sneaked in by my ex. Foxes glacier mints, good for the digestion, make your breath smell fresh and have the edge over other mints not least because they don’t have a hole in the middle, plus they are individually wrapped so its easy to tell if someone else has been sucking them before you. Call me a snob, but I know what I like and although I am not fond of sharing my favourite mints I made an exception in Eunice's case.
I was repaid a hundred fold some weeks after we had both been released from that happy asylum. Eunice and Roger paid me a visit at the shop and plonked a large confectioners bottle of Foxes glacier mints on the counter announcing that they had finally booked a holiday to the one place that Eunice had always wanted to visit, Venice. “When we come back you must come and stay the weekend with us and I will tell you all about Venice” she said excitedly. I told her I would love to, and stay I did, several times. Visiting these two lovely people was a holiday in itself, I was made to feel very at home and although we had only been friends for a short time, it seemed like I had known them a lot longer.
On my last visit Roger and I sat in the garden on a beautiful summer evening drinking Old toms ale and chatting quietly whilst Eunice had a nap. He told me that she was becoming very ill, the doctors felt that there was nothing more that they could do for her, another operation would finish her off so they had suggested a hospice. Eunice and Roger had discussed it but she decided that she wanted to stay at home, that way all the available time they had left would be spent together.
I left the next morning with a parting joke from her, it was the last time I heard her laugh and the last time I saw her alive. As I drove out of the driveway I waved and took one last look in my rear view mirror, the smile had left her face and she was leaning heavily on Rogers arm as he helped her inside.
I had been due to visit again a month or so later, but I received a phone call from Roger politely asking me to leave it for a while longer as Eunice was very ill and not up to visitors. I told him not to worry about it and concentrate on getting her better. I was a hollow suggestion we both knew she didn’t have long to live, but it seemed the right thing to say.
Three days later the phone rang, it was eleven o clock at night and I had just locked the house up ready to go to bed, I could hear Roger sobbing “She has gone, I don’t know what to do, what do I do?” I tried to calm him, he asked if I could possibly come down to the cottage. The drive down took longer than normal because of the conditions, there was a storm raging and the rain made it all but impossible to see. As I drove I tried to think of what I could possibly say that would console him. In the hour and a half that it took me to get there I came up with nothing.
The funeral was poorly attended; they had no relatives to speak of at least none that were talking to them. When I enquired about this he just shook his head. Back at the cottage we sat in silence for a while, every now and again Roger would relate some tale about Eunice and laugh as he remembered, but it was a thin laugh with no conviction. I could tell he was in great pain. Then he told me an extraordinary story.
We were childhood sweethearts, we lived in the same street, went to the same school, grew up together. We were inseparable and miserable when not together. As we grew up and became young adults we knew that we wanted to marry and spend our lives together. But our parents were dead against it, Eunice was packed of to university and I joined the RAF, but we found ways to see each other. When I had leave I would travel to Manchester and stay in a B&B to be near her and when she could she would travel up to the base to be near me. It was like that for years until we finally got a special dispensation to marry.
I was confused but let him carry on. We decided early on that it would be best not to have children, it was a hard decision to make and sometimes I wish we could have had kids, but we had each other and that was the most important thing. I didn’t matter that our families had disowned us as long as we could be together. I told him that I found it hard to imagine that they couldn’t have forgiven them after all these years. They wanted nothing more than to be together, was that such a crime? I asked him.
He looked at me uncertainly and replied, it is if you are cousins and we were. It split our families in two and caused a great deal of pain for them and us. Times were different then, it cast shame on our families, and people were not as tolerant as they are nowadays. None of them came to the wedding and that’s why there were only friends at the funeral today.
I saw Roger on a weekly basis after the day of the funeral, he returned to Venice to scatter Eunices ashes from a bridge and made several trips to Europe. He was lost without his wife, and went rapidly downhill finally succumbing to pneumonia less than a year after she died. He was buried with his beloved wife. There were rather more people at his funeral than at Eunices, relatives in fact. Its amazing how they come out of the woodwork when there is a sniff of money to be had. But they were to be disappointed, there was no money, the cottage had been sold in a deal that let them carry on living there long before Eunice had died. The money paid for their trip to Venice and days out here and there. There was also the conversion to the cottage that helped to make her last months more comfortable.
There had been no formal will as such, just instructions to their solicitor, in any event nobody who had shunned them in life, benefited from them in death. Nearly two years after Rogers death I received a parcel accompanied by a short letter of apology from their solicitor for the delay in delivering a large confectioners bottle of Foxes glacier mints.
Hears to Eunice and Roger who lived a real love story.
I suffered the embarrassing condition of jaundice which turns you bright yellow, makes you smell of iodine and gives your eyes the distinct look of pickled onions (In malt vinegar of course). I was too ill to have the operation to remove the thing on that occasion so the doctors concentrated on making me fit enough for the operation at a later date. *(See Legless and Bloodied.:December)
Actually I was quite ill, all that day I had been in a fever and hallucinating, at one point I was convinced that the house was shaking free of its foundations in an effort to fling itself into outer space, crazy really but infinitely more entertaining than the telly. My ex wife pleaded with me to let her call the doctor, but I would have none of it. I owned a TV and Video shop at the time and was convinced that the fever would pass allowing me to open for business as usual the next morning. How wrong I was, when it was obvious that I was near collapse she phoned the doctor anyway, whom when she arrived took one look at me and phoned for an ambulance.
I don’t remember much about her visit, but apparently I demanded she hand over her bag of tricks so that I would administer succour to myself. When she quite rightly refused I told her to “bang a needle in me woman or get out”. I remember nothing about the trip to hospital or being admitted my next lucid memory was of waking up the next morning in bed on a mixed ward at Manchester general. Which is how I came to meet Eunice and Roger.
Eunice was in the next bed to me and was the first person I spoke to that first morning, my fever had passed, as had my gallstones, but I was still very weak. As I opened my eyes the high ceiling with its suspended lights came slowly into focus and the familiar hospital odour of stale disinfectant, vomit, rotting fruit and lanced boils filled my nostrils.
“You do look a funny colour, do you know you glow in the dark? Even after they turned the lights out I could still read my book by you” Then she laughed, her laugh was infectious, and despite my pain I laughed too. You just had to with Eunice; it was half giggle half guffaw, but very gentile. She was in her late sixties but still a handsome woman and when she laughed or smiled, which was often, the evidence that she had once been a stunningly beautiful woman could be seen even by a blind man.
I discovered that Eunice had been in and out of hospital many times over the preceding three years undergoing several operations that had taken a heavy toll on her body. Despite this she maintained her sense of humour and could manage a joke even when in great pain. I only saw her cry once, not for herself but because a young chap on the other side of the ward had been told he had inoperable cancer.
He was devastated and inconsolable at the news of course, but he put a brave show on for his wife and kids when they visited. After visiting time was over and the quiet night came he could be heard sobbing softly behind his curtains. Eunice spent many long hours in the darkness sat on his bed comforting him, and even on one occasion made him laugh, she was that kind of person, selfless.
She lived in a cottage in Cheshire with her husband Roger, who had been in the airforce, whilst she had been a teacher and attributed her youthful outlook on life to the diverse nature of the thugs she had endeavoured to enlighten down the years. (She did say this with her tongue in her cheek). Once when we were talking about her years teaching she told me that every now and again she came across a child who actually enjoyed learning for learning sake and not as a means to an end, which made it all worth while. She often spoke about those years and when she did her eyes sparkled, she looked wistful and I could tell she was in another time. It was obvious that she missed teaching.
Roger was a tall still handsome man with a handlebar moustache and a military bearing; he made the trip to the hospital twice a day to visit Eunice and was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. They greeted each other as though it had been years since they met, and when it was time to leave the goodbyes were always long and I could see that parting if only for a few hours was a painful experience for them both. They were after many years together still very much in love. It was obvious even to a cynic like myself. He touched her often, would hold her hand and stroke it, gently tracing its contours with his fingers. He would brush her hair for her whilst they chatted and if she fell asleep during a visit as she often did he would sit in the large chair at the side of the bed and look at her. He would hold her hand and sometimes quietly hum a tune as though he were singing a lullaby to an infant.
Because of the nature of my ailment my diet was less than luxurious. Hospital food isn’t up to much at the best of times but the grey stuff that stuck to the plate and refused to succumb to knife, fork or spoon was vile tasting and shot through my system at the speed of light. So I had the only boiled sweet I ever liked sneaked in by my ex. Foxes glacier mints, good for the digestion, make your breath smell fresh and have the edge over other mints not least because they don’t have a hole in the middle, plus they are individually wrapped so its easy to tell if someone else has been sucking them before you. Call me a snob, but I know what I like and although I am not fond of sharing my favourite mints I made an exception in Eunice's case.
I was repaid a hundred fold some weeks after we had both been released from that happy asylum. Eunice and Roger paid me a visit at the shop and plonked a large confectioners bottle of Foxes glacier mints on the counter announcing that they had finally booked a holiday to the one place that Eunice had always wanted to visit, Venice. “When we come back you must come and stay the weekend with us and I will tell you all about Venice” she said excitedly. I told her I would love to, and stay I did, several times. Visiting these two lovely people was a holiday in itself, I was made to feel very at home and although we had only been friends for a short time, it seemed like I had known them a lot longer.
On my last visit Roger and I sat in the garden on a beautiful summer evening drinking Old toms ale and chatting quietly whilst Eunice had a nap. He told me that she was becoming very ill, the doctors felt that there was nothing more that they could do for her, another operation would finish her off so they had suggested a hospice. Eunice and Roger had discussed it but she decided that she wanted to stay at home, that way all the available time they had left would be spent together.
I left the next morning with a parting joke from her, it was the last time I heard her laugh and the last time I saw her alive. As I drove out of the driveway I waved and took one last look in my rear view mirror, the smile had left her face and she was leaning heavily on Rogers arm as he helped her inside.
I had been due to visit again a month or so later, but I received a phone call from Roger politely asking me to leave it for a while longer as Eunice was very ill and not up to visitors. I told him not to worry about it and concentrate on getting her better. I was a hollow suggestion we both knew she didn’t have long to live, but it seemed the right thing to say.
Three days later the phone rang, it was eleven o clock at night and I had just locked the house up ready to go to bed, I could hear Roger sobbing “She has gone, I don’t know what to do, what do I do?” I tried to calm him, he asked if I could possibly come down to the cottage. The drive down took longer than normal because of the conditions, there was a storm raging and the rain made it all but impossible to see. As I drove I tried to think of what I could possibly say that would console him. In the hour and a half that it took me to get there I came up with nothing.
The funeral was poorly attended; they had no relatives to speak of at least none that were talking to them. When I enquired about this he just shook his head. Back at the cottage we sat in silence for a while, every now and again Roger would relate some tale about Eunice and laugh as he remembered, but it was a thin laugh with no conviction. I could tell he was in great pain. Then he told me an extraordinary story.
We were childhood sweethearts, we lived in the same street, went to the same school, grew up together. We were inseparable and miserable when not together. As we grew up and became young adults we knew that we wanted to marry and spend our lives together. But our parents were dead against it, Eunice was packed of to university and I joined the RAF, but we found ways to see each other. When I had leave I would travel to Manchester and stay in a B&B to be near her and when she could she would travel up to the base to be near me. It was like that for years until we finally got a special dispensation to marry.
I was confused but let him carry on. We decided early on that it would be best not to have children, it was a hard decision to make and sometimes I wish we could have had kids, but we had each other and that was the most important thing. I didn’t matter that our families had disowned us as long as we could be together. I told him that I found it hard to imagine that they couldn’t have forgiven them after all these years. They wanted nothing more than to be together, was that such a crime? I asked him.
He looked at me uncertainly and replied, it is if you are cousins and we were. It split our families in two and caused a great deal of pain for them and us. Times were different then, it cast shame on our families, and people were not as tolerant as they are nowadays. None of them came to the wedding and that’s why there were only friends at the funeral today.
I saw Roger on a weekly basis after the day of the funeral, he returned to Venice to scatter Eunices ashes from a bridge and made several trips to Europe. He was lost without his wife, and went rapidly downhill finally succumbing to pneumonia less than a year after she died. He was buried with his beloved wife. There were rather more people at his funeral than at Eunices, relatives in fact. Its amazing how they come out of the woodwork when there is a sniff of money to be had. But they were to be disappointed, there was no money, the cottage had been sold in a deal that let them carry on living there long before Eunice had died. The money paid for their trip to Venice and days out here and there. There was also the conversion to the cottage that helped to make her last months more comfortable.
There had been no formal will as such, just instructions to their solicitor, in any event nobody who had shunned them in life, benefited from them in death. Nearly two years after Rogers death I received a parcel accompanied by a short letter of apology from their solicitor for the delay in delivering a large confectioners bottle of Foxes glacier mints.
Hears to Eunice and Roger who lived a real love story.
Labels: cheshire, foxy's glacier mints, funeral, gall bladder, north manchester general, RAF
6 Comments:
That's a very sad story but lovely at the same time.
I know somebody who married their cousin and quite rightly had the blessings of both their families. It's a shame Eunice and Roger didn't, they sounded like a lovely couple.
Mike
They were indeed Mike and it seems incredible to me that both their families deserted them.
What an incredible story, Dave. Thank you for sharing it.
Lydia
Your very welcome Lydia.
A sad but lovely story. It never ceases to amaze me how some family members can hold grudges stretching back years - just because someone didn't do something the way they thought they should have. It happens more often than you might think.
I know of children who have been disowned because they married "the wrong person," or decided not to have children. They were told that they had "brought shame" on the family. *shakes head.*
britgirl
It's the kind of thing you only imagine happens in well bred high to do families of the type you encounter in soaps, but sadly it must happen across the board.
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